Car Hire in America?

DavidHale

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Me and my daughter are going to South West USA in April, a tour of the Wild West - Grand Canyon, Arches, Bryce, Zion, that sorta thing. I'm planning on flying into Las Vegas and want to know if it's cheaper/easier to book the car hire from this country or wait until we get to the USA? Advice please?
 
Have a look at http://www.auto-europe.co.uk/car.cfm for a price comparison.

Basically they deal with all the hire car companies.

I was put onto them a few years ago after booking a US trip that came with a free car, but you had to take their insurance (yeah, I know). Anyway, the trip was an excellent last minute deal, so called to purchase their "gold" insurance and the operator said "Between you & me, try this website. We all use it when we go abroad"

So we didn't bother collecting the free car and hired one thru these guys instead.

The cost of the hire, a Sebring convertible, complete with full insurance, was less than the "gold" insurance package.....about £15 a day at the time. Just had a quick look & a mustang convertible looks about £28-30/day now......
 
I got a great deal off the yahoo travel site - collect car from Chicago, drop off San Jose 28 days later

£400, not heard of the supplier before but when I paid they were part of UK chain
 
Jon, just tried that website - £130 cheaper than anything else I'd found! Cheers for that; got any flight or hotel websites you can recommend? :D
 
You could do worse than use the guys Bilcos recommending for flights for the Alsaka & TAT tours this year -
It's worth checking around to see what's available and I use a company called the Flight Centre in Glasgow and your contact there is shelley.mullen@flightcentre.co.uk. She knows about these trips and she's promised to beat any other quotes so it's worth contacting her. You also get a proper travel pack with tickets etc which is nice Also, you may want to try Air Canada as an option. They aren't direct but are generally very competetive on price and are often good for an upgrade

I was out in the US in March this year, trundling around on a Harley on my own, with only the first couple of days stops booked.

I picked up an iPad & pretty much used that and trip advisor (along with the hotels free wifi) to research any area I felt like going thru/stopping in for places to stay.

Got some good deals & some nice hotels. Also when you work out where you fancy, try the hotels own website, they sometimes have a deal on that beats any website (expedia etc) - I got 2 nights in a swanky hotel in Palm Springs, just off the strip for $30 a night :thumb2

All depends if you want each nights stop planned in advance, or are prepared to wing it a bit.
 
I used carhire 3000 last year. They did a great deal and I got a free upgrade to a V8 Dodge Charger :clap
 
We booked via Carhire 3000 last Easter, booked a 'mid size' and got a Dodge Charger??? Nice car, but not ideal for touring as we found the roof line quite low.

But anyway, your goner have a great time!
 
I've been dozens of times and always found it cheaper to book from the UK before travel!!
 
AutoEurope

I have just came back from the US. Used Autoeurope as recommended above and was quite happy with how they work.

The actual rental was with company Dollar. Only thing was, that from the car rental company, I was sold full tank of fuel, which I actually did not need. The person arranging the rental made it look as if it would be the only option available as the cars were given away with full tank. As it was my first time renting car in the US, it got me bit unprepared and I did not bother complaining. Later I found out that there is a possibility to bring the car back with full tank.
 
Sorry to resuscitate an old thread, but I've just booked a Mustang convertible "or similar" from Alamo at Denver airport in July.

The "similar" model seems to be the Chrysler 200, which is the Sebring replacement, but hardly similar to a Mustang........it's not exactly an American icon

Has anyone hired one of these Chryslers from Alamo and, if so, was it the 3.6 litre V6 or the poxy 2.4 inline four? Hopefully it'll be the 3.6 if I don't get the Mustang :nenau
 
Well, I arrived in Denver and thankfully had a choice of a Camaro, Mustang or Chrysler 200 convertible.

I stuck with my first choice as the Camaro was even more plasticky inside than the Mustang and didn't have leather seats.

It's a little crude compared to a European car, but corners pretty well in the Black Hills. It's very sluggish though for a 300bhp V6 and I'm pretty sure my 320d would spank its arse on acceleration (or at least it feels that way). Fuel consumption was about 35mpg UK (29mpg US) at a steady 65 heading across the Great Plains on Saturday, so basically double what a 320d does at that speed :eek: Good job the fuel is half the price to compensate....
 

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Personally, I'd wait until you're in the US to coordinate everything. It'll be easier and you'll have more options, which means more savings.
 
If you're doing long drives and are not too bothered about sporty handling, get a Cadilac DTS. You'll get a good rate on one through Hertz...... fantastic mile muncher and surprisingly cheap to rent.
 
Anyone thinking of using Auto Europe ...

Yup - guess who just got told of the $750 location fee after completing their $400 booking?
What was that all about, can you tell us more? I'll be booking a car over there myself in the next few days. :)
 
What was that all about, can you tell us more? I'll be booking a car over there myself in the next few days. :)

In that case I would recommend that you do your own, thorough research instead of putting too much weight on too few recommendations. That's what I did, got stung with the 'different location fee' (I'm picking up in Florida but dropping off in New York) and only then did I research the company I had booked with more fully. Should have done that first - if the rest of the internet is to be believed then even with the customary pinch of salt applied they come across somewhat unsavoury.

Went with Avis in the end, on the basis that I use them a lot in EU and their price was close enough ...
 
Fair comment, always wise to look into things properly of course, I was puzzled by what you meant by "location fee", $750 seemed a hell of a sting, the few times I have dropped a car off somewhere else I wasn't charged, but most times it was either 'downtown' instead of at the airport or vice versa and on the other hand last year we picked a car up in Eilat and dropped it off in Tel Aviv. a distance of 220 miles /350 km with no extra charge- some companies seem to have a nominal fee, but I've never come across a charge like you had. Mind, Florida to New York...

I have to admit that I do get rather stressed about hiring cars, as someone mentioned on the thread you can get sucked in with an unexpected special offer and not notice that there's a hidden catch buried in the small print. Then there are things like CDW, TP, LDW and SLI regarding car insurance; I've made a checklist in my holiday book of things to watch out for when planning a holiday and the section on car hire gets very carefully checked before committing.

One thing I always have now is extra insurance from Insurance4CarHire, (see insurance4carhire.com ) which provides excess cover and things like damage to tyres, for European rentals it costs £40 for a year which works out a hell of a lot cheaper for us as we rent a car at least twice a year in Europe, we did claim for a damaged tyre once (I sliced the sidewall of tyre open on the razor-edged granite kerbstones in Ronda) and they sorted it no bother. For the Israel-Jordan trip last year we needed the 'Worldwide' cover and for this year we shall need the 'USA and Canada' cover, as the 'Worldwide' cover will still be running we can upgrade that to 'USA and Canada' cover. As it happens our daughter will be working in the States for some months so perhaps I'll be making use of that one-off payment on a couple of holidays there.

As for the advisability of getting excess insurance, well, we have been lucky in the past when getting free upgrades, in 1991 we got one from something quite ordinary- I forget what- to a Chrysler Imperial, a huge battleship of a thing, I remember giggling like an idiot when I was offered it, but it turned out to be magnificent for touring, all the bells and whistles, acres of room and electric everything, (as in electrically adjusted seats that remembered individual settings for instance) reminders for everything: boing boing boing if you left the key in the ignition, another bing bing bing for locking the door with a window open, automatic transmission of course: all new to a limey from across the pond, and rather enchanting if truth be told. Anyway I hadn't realise there was a humungus excess on the insurance on the upgraded car, it might have been about fifteen hundred dollars if I remember. I didn't need to claim mercifully, and ever since I have taken a closer interest in car rental insurance.

:beerjug:
 
Was it any use getting in touch with the Port Everglades depot in the end? Unlikely I would have thought if you were in Savannah by then.

Interesting that it was a premium(?) class of car and from what I would have thought a reputable rental firm (Avis) and a hefty price too. I must say you appear to have good cause to complain and that your letter to Avis was very well written and restrained in the circumstances. From what little experience I've had of complaining in the States the bigger firms are very eager to please, the first time was in Canada (oops- not the States- never mind) when the tube came off the windscreen washer on a rented Ford Explorer in winter in the Rockies, a small thing in itself of course but a real nuisance in the snow and slush thrown up. I had managed to push it back on myself a few times but it was hard to reach under all the clutter under the bonnet and it kept on coming off, we took it into a garage in Kamloops and they did a proper job of it for free, bless them; people so often go out of their way to help travellers I've found. Anyway, we phoned the Rental people (Hertz, Vancouver, I think) and were immediately offered two days off the rental period. The last time I had cause to complain was a couple of weeks ago when I had a lot of bother booking a room at the Washington DC Fairmont, I was on the phone to them five times for a total of an hour and a quarter; we got a free upgrade to a suite at double the price of our original room. What was also impressive was the fact that they did genuinely seem to care about what we thought, their offer of the suite definately confirmed that.

Thanks for posting, I still haven't booked a car for our forthcoming trip, it has made me consider the wisdom of going for the cheapest price, I really couldn't live with a car with dodgy brakes and would hate to have one as dirty as yours looked in the photos. Do let us know what happened in the end, was it sorted?
 


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